Shining Threads (37 page)

She was herself again, in other words, arrogant, conceited and charming and the harsh desolation of her nightly weeping was known to no one. They were not aware, those who condemned her
wildness, that only in such desperate frivolity, the light-minded and heedless search for ‘fun’ which was the sole aim of the set of which she was a part, could she momentarily displace
her deep unhappiness. The despairing misery which washed over her when she was alone was held at bay only by the total abandonment with which she flung herself into their giddy lives. What else was
she to do, she asked herself hopelessly, when she was alone with her ghosts? The brief fling she had enjoyed with Robby Atherton, who had not been seen at the Hall since, was over with neither the
worse for it, they were saying, though of course
her
reputation would never be the same again. Only
she
knew that
she
would never be the same again.

In short, she fitted again into the world of the squirearchy, the gentry and the lesser aristocracy as she and her cousins had always done, preferring ploughed fields and recklessly taken
ditches, damp drizzled mornings of moorland, wind and foul weather to the polite and civilised world of dinner parties, soirées and evenings of culture which her aunt by marriage, the
socially ambitious Mrs Charles Greenwood, thought she should favour. She was known quite definitely to join the gentlemen in their after-dinner billiards and claret and to have won quite a large
sum of money at some card game at the Hall. A restive colt again, she appeared to be, impatient of all restraint, though those who spoke of it agreed that at almost twenty she was long past the age
to be coltish.

‘She’s trying to kill herself,’ they said, not at all surprised for it was known they, meaning herself and her cousins, had always been mad.

‘She
will
kill herself,’ Laurel declared when the wild, hell-raking stories of Tessa Harrison’s disdain for her own life and limb became common knowledge and her mother
grew old before their eyes, agonising not only on the peril to her daughter’s physical safety, but on that to her mind.

‘Why don’t you come to the mill with me, lass?’ she asked carefully one day in September. ‘Come and see what you make of it.’

‘Drew and Pearce made nothing of it, Mother,’ she answered in that coolly impersonal voice in which she addressed Jenny Harrison, ‘so why should I?’

‘You have more sense than the two of them put together, if you’d care to put it to some use.’

‘At the mill, you mean?’

‘Aye, why not? It helped me when I was . . .’

‘What, Mother?’

‘When I needed my mind taking off things.’

‘And is that what I need?’

‘You are still . . . still not yourself, lass,’ she said awkwardly. Neither am I, she thought and can you wonder after what has happened to us both? The very foundation of their
lives had been disturbed, roots which they had thought to be securely settled almost torn out, roots which were still shaky and prey to any stray breeze which might blow against them. It was as
though the rock to which they had both thought themselves firmly fastened had become dislodged and they must take care, in their fragile relationship, not to tumble down the scree which loomed
beneath them.

‘I didn’t hear you come in last night, Tessa, and I was awake until past midnight. I know it’s the acceptable thing for young men to go skylarking into the early hours, but it
won’t do for you.’

‘It’s a bit late to be concerned about my reputation, Mother, if that’s what’s bothering you, and I was not out all night. And besides, Nicky and Johnny are as good as
brothers to me, just as Drew and Pearce were, and until they return home I’m quite safe with their friends.’

‘That’s as maybe . . .’

‘We only rode up to Friar’s Mere to see if the ghosts of the monks really do walk as they say they do when the moon is full.’

‘Why, in heaven’s name?’

‘Why not, Mother? It is no more senseless than your going each day to the mill to watch cotton being spun and woven.’

‘That cotton buys the line blood horses you ride and that outrageous outfit you wear.’

‘Mother . . . if you don’t mind I am due at the . . .’

‘Lass, I’m only trying to help you. To give you something . . . a purpose, a road to set your feet on again.’

‘Really, Mother, I have a road . . .’

‘No, you have not. A wild track, that’s all, and where will it lead?’

‘Can you honestly see me doing what you do all day? Sitting at my desk planning business strategy, dealing with commercial gentlemen from Manchester or wherever it is they come from? I
would not know a bale of raw cotton from a . . . from a carding machine, nor a mule from a loom, and as for the financial side, well, it’s as incomprehensible to me as how to sew a fine
seam.’

‘You could learn, child, and it would give you some diversion other than riding about the countryside with that wild pack of your cousins’ friends. You need something else besides .
. .’

‘I have something else, Mother. I have been invited to go down to Leicestershire with the Longworths. The Squire’s lady seems to have relented and pardoned me my lapse of good
manners of last year. She seems to be of the opinion that having been . . . been jilted by a gentleman whom I, a member of the manufacturing classes, should not have had the ill-breeding to
monopolise in the first place, I can now be forgiven. I can consider myself under
her
patronage, she says, providing I don’t try to marry her son.’

The young soldier lay on the narrow cot. Every time he twisted his racked body the blanket which covered him was thrown violently aside and each time it fell, the second soldier who sat by his
bed patiently recovered it and patted it tenderly back into place.

The enormous room was filled with the subdued murmur of men’s voices, some, like this soldier, babbling in delirium, others whispering, mumbling, staring upwards into the high, vaulted
ceiling, some perhaps praying, others on the road to recovery or not so badly hurt or ill, talking quietly to one another.

There was a mixture of odours, the overall stench of putrefaction and vomit, of blood and excrement, almost but not quite masked, by the smell of good carbolic soap and antiseptic.

A nurse stopped and put a hand on the brow of the soldier in the bed, smiling at the man who sat beside him. She was decently dressed in a neat grey gown over which she wore a huge white apron.
Her hair was confined in a white cap and she reminded the soldier of a capable nanny he had had as a child. There were a dozen or more just like her, moving from bed to bed; others were scrubbing
floors, up to their elbows in buckets of lye-soap as they patiently attempted to keep at bay the cholera, the typhus, the dysentery and the half a dozen other diseases which were killing more men
than had been cut down in battle.

The war with Russia was almost over. Sebastopol had finally fallen but out of the 405,000 men committed to the Crimean War by the British and the French, almost 26,000 were killed on the field
and a staggering 39,000 from disease.

‘Does your wound need dressing again, Mr Greenwood?’ the nurse said gently to the man by the bed.

‘No thank you, nurse. It’s almost healed now. You have been most kind.’

‘You really should go back to your lodgings, you know. Your brother is in good hands and should there be any change I will send an orderly for you.’

‘I would be most grateful if I might be allowed to stay for a while longer. We were . . . are . . . very close and if he should . . . Well, we are twins, you see.’

‘Yes, that is very evident, Mr Greenwood.’ The nurse smiled and hesitated, her kind eyes studying the thin, paper-white face of the young man by the bed, then the flushed and hectic
one on the pillow. ‘Very well, a few more minutes, but the surgeon will be here soon and . . .’ She hesitated again as though weighing her words before speaking. ‘I . . . well,
I’m sure you are aware of the seriousness of your brothers condition.’

‘Yes.’

‘The stump has not healed and is . . . I’m so sorry, Mr Greenwood, but I’m afraid the gangrene has taken a firm hold and the surgeon is certain we will have to cut
again.’

The young man bowed his head, no immediate expression of any sort crossing his young/old face and the nurse felt an urge to put out a hand to him for he was no more than a boy. He raised his
head and smiled as though he was trying to spare her pain and she felt a hint of the charm he must once have possessed in another world than this, shine through to please her woman’s
heart.

‘Yes, I understand, nurse. I will remain, if I may, until the surgeon has been.’

The soldier on the bed began to fling his arms about and his hands clawed desperately at his face. His head moved frantically from side to side on his sweat-stained pillow.

‘Get them off me . . . Sweet Christ, I can’t breathe . . . please, oh, please . . . I can’t breathe . . . heavy . . . get them off me . . . Jesus, oh, Jesus . . . It’s
the mill all over again, the bloody mill . . . suffocating . . . I won’t go in again, Charlie, I swear it . . .’

His voice ended on a despairing scream and the nurse looked about her hurriedly, for the morphine with which he was drugged was evidently wearing off and some more must be administered by the
doctor.

‘And you shan’t, old fellow, you shan’t. Do you think I would let them take you in there again, knowing how you hate it?’ The young man’s voice was soft and filled
with love. The soldier calmed somewhat as his brother’s hand smoothed his hair back from his fevered brow and his eyes, almost submerged in the swollen flesh about them, opened a little.

‘Brother . . .’ He managed the semblance of a smile.

‘I’m here, lad, I’m here.’

‘I was having one of those damnable nightmares.’ His expression was apologetic.

‘I know.’

‘I’m glad you’re here . . .’

‘You can’t get rid of me, lad. The proverbial bad penny . . .’

‘I’d . . . I’d have liked to see her again.’

‘You will, old chap, just as soon as we get you on your feet.’

‘You’ll make sure she knows I love her.’

‘You’ll tell her yourself . . .’ But the soldier’s vivid blue eyes had become unfocused again and the brightness of delirium had returned as his voice rambled on about
the loveliness of the golden bracken and the swiftness of his bay which would take him to her. He did not want to spend his life in that accursed weaving shed, he declared irritably, when there
were so many other more pleasurable things to do. The fox . . . it was away . . .

He was drowsy now as the drug administered by the doctor took effect and it was only then that the man beside him broke down. What fools life made of us, was his agonised thought, when his
brother’s life could now be measured only in hours.

It was to Annie that Tessa first spoke of Will Broadbent.

‘What of Will?’ she asked carelessly. ‘Does he still call on you?’

‘Aye, whenever ’e can.’

‘And is he well?’

‘Champion.’ And nowt to do with you, her manner said but Tessa was never one to be put out by Annie’s close· mouthed asperity.

‘Is he . . . did he become manager? There was talk of it the last time we met.’

‘No.’

‘
No?
Then who got the job? And why didn’t he?’

‘It weren’t for ’im, ’e said. ’E were after summat else an’ so ’e ’opped it.’

‘’Opped it? Whatever does that mean, for God’s sake?’

‘Look, my girl, I don’t press you ter tell me what came o’ that chap you was to wed and then never, so don’t you go pokin’ yer nose in Will Broadbent’s
business. It’s nowt ter do wi’ you.’

‘Annie . . . Dear God, don’t . . .’

Instantly Annie was sorry. She had not meant to be so unkind. Had she not been aware that though Tessa had spoken not one word about the surprising disappearance of the man she was to marry, his
going had devastated her? She had been ill and Annie had made enquiries about her and had even sent a note but she had received no reply. Not that that concerned her but she had never quite
forgiven Tessa for her indifference to Will Broadbent last year. Now here she was asking casual questions just as though he had been no more than an acquaintance.

‘’E’s gone.’ Her manner was short, since, like affection, humility was hard to demonstrate.

‘Really, Annie, if you don’t stop this . . . this foolishness I swear I’ll throttle you. Can you not just answer a simple question with a simple answer instead of all this
evasiveness?’

‘I don’t reckon I know what that means but ’e’s gone an’ I were told yer Mam an’ Mr Greenwood were right upset when ’e went. ’E’s an
’ead on ’is shoulders ’as Will and Mr Greenwood told ’im so ’an all.’

For some unaccountable reason Tessa felt her heart begin to thud in her chest and she was reluctant to let Annie see the awkward and stiff set of her shoulders. She stood up and moved to the
window, staring out into Annie’s scrap of garden.

‘What is he doing then?’

‘’E’s gone up Rochdale way. ’E’s brought the Chadwick spinners and weavers together to form a co-operative and run their own industrial enterprise. Will set up a
committee, apparently with ’imself as chairman. They’ve found t’capital, Will said, by selling shares at five pounds each an’ all’t shares were sold within’t
week.’ Annie spoke with the care of a child who repeats some passage she has learned by heart but does not really understand.

‘They bought some land at a penny a yard, close to’t railway where there’s a siding an’t mill were built an’ in business in six months. There’s 400 looms fer
weavin’ and 20,000 spindles fer spinnin’. Will ses that at the first ’alf-yearly meetin’ of‘t company an’ the 450 shareholders, they’d. already med a
decent profit an’ look set fer a prosperous future. Will’s managin’ director an’ the last time chap what I were talkin’ to saw ’im he were ridin’ in a
carriage wi’ a pretty woman at side of ’im. Whether it were ’is carriage or ’ers I couldn’t tell thi. Now then, did y’ever think ter see’t day when a
pauper’s brat, fer that were what he was, could rise ter such heights? Mind, he were a good tackler, were Will. ’E knew engines an’ e’ knew cotton from’t minute it
come from’t bale right through t’t piece goods. An’ ’e were fair wi’ people. Now it seems as ’ow ’e’s got a feel fer business an’
all.’